


Compliance Will Be Rewarded

by Wind_Ryder



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, Grief, Lack of Bodily Care, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 19:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2704361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wind_Ryder/pseuds/Wind_Ryder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone told him once: "Compliance will be rewarded," and he remembers pressing his head against a man’s leg in open supplication. He remembers hands in his hair, and a gentle grip on the back of his neck. He remembers a man telling him "so good, so good for me aren't you?" And he remembers nodding his head in a desperate attempt to be exactly as good as he was supposed to be. </p><p>~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*</p><p>Bucky Barnes is physically free from Hydra, but the hold on his mind lingers still. All he wants is to go home, and he'll do anything he can to get there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compliance Will Be Rewarded

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bookworm213](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookworm213/gifts).



> Bookworm213 requested: Bucky wandering homeless around DC/New York trying to remember. I don’t know why but I can’t get enough of those kinds of fics! Anyway, would you like to write a different version of the story? I’ve also been thirsting for fics where Bucky doesn’t know how to take care of himself because HYDRA made him completely dependent on him.

The first thing that comes back to him, is the memory of disobedience. He broke his directives, he rejected his orders, and he was filled to the brim with the memory of what it felt like to disobey. Disobeying, he considered, never felt good. It felt like cold and hot, strikes against flesh and long entrenched feelings of guilt that never let up. 

 

 _“I’m sorry momma,”_ he had said, once, to a frail old woman with tears in her eyes. 

 

 _“I just don’t understand why you test me so,”_ she had replied, dabbing at the tears with an old stained cloth. He thinks that those memories hurt the worst, and that the strap of an old man’s belt against his bottom made his heart spasm in agony far more than the jolts of the chair. 

 

His mouth opens on instinct, waiting for the guard to slide between his teeth. Nothing happens, and he knows he’s alone, but he misses the guard and he misses the silence that always filled his mind whenever he was done with the chair. 

 

Someone told him once: " _Compliance will be rewarded,"_  and he remembers pressing his head against a man’s leg in open supplication. He remembers hands in his hair, and a gentle grip on the back of his neck. He remembers a man telling him  _so good, so good for me aren't you?_  and he remembers nodding his head in a desperate attempt to be exactly as good as he was supposed to be. 

 

He remembers his knuckles being bruised as he curled into a bed next to three little girls, and he remembers hearing them whisper about how he was being purposefully difficult. He remembers hearing a knock on the window, and having to crawl over the girls to answer it. They came with him, and pressed against his side, and they each chastised the young boy at the window who looked bashful and uncertain. He remembers getting a sharp thwack on the back of his head as they were all ordered to return to their sleep, and the look of shame on the boy at the window’s face as he stuttered out an apology. 

 

 _“Oh get you home, Steven, you know you’ll be forgiven eventually in any case. But I’m surely cross with you both right now and haven’t got the time or care left to spare on you at the moment!”_ the woman with the cloth said as she pat the boy at the window’s hands. The boy climbed down and away, and he remembers watching the boy disappear into the night.  _“Bed——, bed.”_ The woman might have said his name then, if he had one, but the name is hidden by a fog of white noise, and that he doesn’t remember at all. 

 

He remembers, instead, lessons in patience. He remembers how he didn’t like sitting still, and that the boy at the window used to shout and yell at him - waving a book in the air and complaining the whole while. He remembers, instead, the feeling of too tight cuffs chaining him to a wall- his eyes peeled back with adhesive, as he stared endlessly into a void. He remembers being told that all he had to do was stay still, and if he stayed still long enough - he would know peace.

 

“ _Take a deep breath. Calm your mind. You know what’s best. What’s best is you comply. Compliance will be rewarded.”_

 

He doesn’t remember peace. 

 

He does remember the cuffs falling away, the adhesive being let up, and a hand in his hair telling him he did such a good job. He does remember staring endlessly into a void that never stopped, and being told that he was the best of them. Their greatest asset. Their treasure. He was told that this was what it was to be one of the blessed few. The chosen. Those that will save the world. 

 

He doesn’t remember peace. 

 

But he does remember patience. 

 

Sit still. Don’t move. Don’t want. It is not his job to want. It is not his purpose to need. It is not his decision to make. So he doesn’t. He is patient. Someone will come. Someone always does. 

 

He knows how to hide in a crowd. He knows how to blend in. His armor is shed and his weapons are hidden in a cache underground. He pulls a coat on and he hides his arm, and he does all this because they told him that no one is allowed to see his face. No one is allowed to know him. He is meant to be a ghost, and he is a ghost. He is dead, and yet alive, and it doesn’t make sense, but that’s not for him to consider. 

 

He waits for someone to come, because someone always come, and he is patient just as he’s been told to be patient. He thinks he likes the idea of a small boy with a book, yelling at him for not sitting still, but he doesn’t know what it means to like, and he knows that he’s not allowed to do so anyway. He tries to stop thinking, tries to push the thoughts to his side, because he remembers what it means when he starts to think. They bring him to the chair - and he loses it all, and the more he thinks, the more he believes he doesn’t like the emptiness that follows. 

 

He opens his mouth and waits for a guard, but it never comes, and he wishes it would. He sits at a bench and he stares at the water. He listens for the sounds of someone approaching, but no one does. He wonders if he should move, if he should do something, if he should do anything else. He is not meant to wonder. He is not meant to think. He is not meant to disobey. He ducks his head and he waits for someone to come for him. 

 

But unlike every time before - no one comes, and he doesn’t know what he’s meant to do. 

 

The sun rises and sets and he doesn’t move, even when the birds come and sit at his side. He sees joggers passing by, and sometimes they stare and look at him, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t lift his head. There is a sensation in his body that aches with each passing moment. He’s wet and disheveled and he’s falling to pieces. He hears a child crying in the distance about a doll who’s lost it’s arm in a fierce game of tug of war between her and her brother. He thinks that he’s lost his arm too, but he doesn’t think it can be fixed with just a needle and thread. He doesn’t think that his mother can stitch it back into place like the child’s. He doesn’t want to listen anymore. He shivers in the cold, and he waits.

 

Two days pass, and no one has come. 

 

He stands from the bench, and he sways on his feet. His clothes have been soiled many times through, and he thinks that he’s stained the bench beneath him. It is raining, and he has disobeyed his orders once more. He has been told not to eat or imbibe anything no matter what circumstances may be. As the rain fell upon his face, he tilted his head upwards and opened his mouth. 

 

Water tapped onto his tongue and he stayed there, feeling it slide down his throat without conscious effort. His body is in agony, and his head is searing sharply. He thinks he is exhausted and he thinks that he wants to sleep. He thinks, too, that that is not allowed. Someone asked, once, more than once, many times, so many times, he’s not sure how many times, but he hears it like a round between his ears. “ _Is this a test?”_

 

He knows compliance will be rewarded, but he also knows, now, that his compliance had never been easily gained. He knows he disobeys too often. He knows that he hears the words sometimes, and sometimes he kills those who say them. He knows that he has killed more handlers than any other member of his organization, and he thinks that they’re afraid of him because of that. He’s not allowed to think. They tell him that all the time. Compliance is a choice, and he’s not permitted them either. He’s so confused. He doesn’t know what he wants, or what he’s meant to do. His mind shifts and turns and he yearns for guidance. 

 

He remembers, now, that they tried to convince him to comply, and that for some time it was easier to do just that. It was easier to follow his handlers and kneel on the floor at their feet. It was easier to press his head to their gentle hands and tell them what they wanted to hear. It was easier, and he was allowed to sleep then. It was nice when he complied. It was nice, until the thoughts started. 

 

The thoughts started and they didn’t stop, and then the sick feeling in his body mounted more and more. There was a little boy at a window who visited him even when he wasn’t allowed. There was a bigger boy with a sketchbook. There was a tall man with a shield.

 

He recoils violently and he stumbles from his bench. He walks through the rain and he presses his fingers into his mouth. He needed to bite on something to silence his screams, and he paws at his head desperately. He doesn’t want to think, he doesn’t like to think. He doesn’t want the silence. He doesn’t want to listen. He’s spiraling, spiraling, spiraling, lost and alone. 

 

He finds an alcove to sit in and he draws his knees to his chest. He bites at his metal fingers and he clutches his head in agony. He doesn’t want to be here, and he doesn’t like it here at all. He wants someone to come for him, but he doesn’t know who. 

 

More than anything - he just wants to go home. 

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

His clothes don’t fit him properly anymore, and so he secures a new set. His metal arm hangs heavily to one side, and his muscles ache as they try to support it. His body is no longer appropriately conditioned, and he doesn’t understand the endless pain that it is in. There’s something he’s missing, he knows. There’s something that he’s meant to have, but doesn’t. There’s something he’s supposed to be able to do, but he can’t figure it out, and he doesn’t know how to make it all better. 

 

He has been corrupted. He realizes this as he follows the smells of food in the street. He stares at the people as they come in and out of shops, hot drinks and confectionary sugars in their hands. He’s trembling with desire and longing, and he knows that he has lost his primary drive and focus. Something has truly destroyed his programming, and he is terrified that no one has come to correct it yet. 

 

He longs, desperately, to have what these people have. He bites at his metal hand, desperate for something in his mouth, and he tries to feel better as he chews. He accidentally tears off a strip of leather from around the glove he was using to hide his fingers from the world. His eyes roll backwards in horrid bliss, but realization settles in far too quick. He is not permitted to eat. He chokes and sobs as he spits it out. He stumbles away from the foods and the drinks. He rushes out into the darkest corners of the city, and he shakes and whispers that he’ll be good - he won’t disobey. Please no more. Don’t take these away. 

 

There’s a woman in his mind, and she had a cloth to dry her eyes and wipe his face. She smiled at him and laughed when he danced with her. He liked to dance, once, and there was a man who played bars on the piano as he swirled the woman around their home. He knew it was their home just as he knew that this woman was special and wonderful in every way. There are three little girls in pretty white dresses and they clapped and cheered as he spun the woman about. 

 

He doesn’t know who they are or why he knows them, but he doesn’t want them gone. They occupy a place in his head that he hadn’t been using, and he doesn’t mind that they’re there. He doesn’t mind that they’re willing to share their lives with him. He wishes they’ll share more. 

 

There’s a blonde boy with a split lip who complains about the world, and he thinks he’d like to listen to him some more. The blonde boy, who climbs windows and draws and yells at him for moving, doesn’t know why he would want to spend time with him. The blonde boy reminds him he’s Catholic time and again, that it was only going to get him in trouble for spending time with a Catholic boy. But, that doesn’t matter then or now. Nothing matters to him. He’s not allowed to make a choice. 

 

He thinks he said, once,  _“Ain’t gonna matter who or what you are, cause I’m look out for you either way,”_  and the blonde boy looked meek and uncomfortable at the declaration. He thinks that’s the last time he heard the blond boy complain about that, and he thinks that he wants to know why. 

 

His vision is blurring, and he knows he requires assistance. He knows that he had gone past his standard check in times, but no one has come to collect him and he did not know where to go. On the tenth day since he had first disobeyed, he finds himself in the bank vault with the chair. It is deserted and no one is around. He stares at it all and he wonders if someone will come for him. He turns away before he can think too much more on that. There’s dust in the air and the sensors are dark. No one is coming, and no one will come. He’s alone, abandoned, and he doesn’t know what to do. 

 

There is no mission parameter for this. There is no back up plan. There is no contact. There is no safe house. There is only existence and death, and he was never told how to maintain himself. He’s not sure if he’s allowed to. He was never good at complying on command, but he wishes someone would give him an answer now, at the very least. His mind aches, his thoughts are not right, and he has no direction. He doesn’t want to be alone anymore. 

 

 _“Steve,”_  he thinks, the name coming to mind just as he loses his balance and falls to the damp concrete earth. He pulls his knees to his chest and he shivers in pain, and he presses his fingers to his mouth.  _“I want to go home.”_

 

He thinks he said that a lot at some point. He thinks those words were once a prayer. He thinks he would have given anything to see his home again, and through it all - he knows that such a place no longer exists. He is adrift, caught in the torrent of the world spinning around and around. There is no anchor to hold him down. There is no balm to heal this wound. He is lost, and alone, and he is homeless. There is nothing here for him.

 

He was built in the image of an asset to Hydra, and now he thinks that Hydra is gone, and so his usefulness has gone with it. He doesn’t know what he is anymore, but he thinks that he would very much like it if everything else around him just stopped. He doesn't want to think stray thoughts. He doesn’t want a body that ached. He doesn't want to want. He doesn’t want anything at all, and yet he cannot seem to stop falling down the rabbit hole of desires. 

 

He is a conundrum, and he is maelstrom. He is not used to leading his own thoughts, and he is not used to moving without direction. There was a man, once, who placed his arm around his shoulders and held his head down as bombs burst overhead. The man looked at him and called him ‘Sarge’ and told him that the war was going to be over soon, and that they’d all make it out okay. They’d all get home safe, all he had to do was wait and see. He thinks that he had been crying as the man spoke, that he had been blood stained and standing amongst the mutilated bodies of people he once knew. He thinks, also, that that man died from a bullet in the brain. He thinks, too, that he was told soon after that there was a war going on. Men lived and died every day. Buck up. Be strong. Stiff upper lip. Time marches on, and he marched, then, into the open arms of a factory that took him apart like a little girl’s doll, and he had no momma there to sew him back together correctly. 

 

He thinks he saw nightmares in that factory, though none were more pervasive than a rescue led by a blonde boy he left someplace safe long ago. He doesn’t think that nightmare ever ended. He thinks, maybe, he’s still in that factory, and he’s never going to leave it alive. 

 

Three weeks later, he collapsed on the side of a road, limbs shaking uncontrollably as his head tilted back. He doesn’t think of anything at all, except that it feels familiar. He thinks he’s been here before. Usually it takes a chair to do it, but he thinks it’s all right. He won’t think anything soon enough. 

 

And he doesn’t. 

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

He wakes up in a bed, and a fat woman with squinting eyes tells him that he had a seizure, that he’s massively underweight, and that he had nearly succumbed from the lack of nutrients in his blood. He’s surrounded by medical equipment, and he thinks that she might finally be one of the people sent to look for him. He feels a swirl of relief and anxiety, and he stares at her in hopes that she’ll make sense of the world that he’s living in. There are images in his head that don’t belong, and there’s a family of people that keep following him in the darkest corners of his mind. Those people are becoming more numerous, and they each have personalities of their own, and he’s certain that he’s not meant to know about people like that. They’re all good and decent, and he doesn’t believe he’s killed any of them. They’re not missions, they’re not targets, and he knows they must be memories, but they feel more special then memories and he doesn’t want to lose them like he always loses everything else. 

 

She changes the script she’s meant to say, and she asks him questions that she shouldn’t ask.

 

“What’s your name?” 

 

“Where are you from?” 

 

“Is there someone we can call?” 

 

There are lines feeding into his skin that are filling his body with the nutrients, and he can feel a catheter within him. He knows from the moisture in his mouth that he is no longer dehydrated. This is good, and this is bad. It will make it easier to move, but painful as he pulls the needles and lines from his body. He must escape. He must leave. He’s not meant to be here. He’s not meant to be seen. 

 

She’s looking at his arm with obvious interest, and he knows she’s not meant to do that. He knows that he’s supposed to keep it hidden and secret. He knows that if people know he’ll be in trouble. He’s disobeyed, again, worse than all the small acts he’d done so far. 

 

She doesn’t get to say anything else, because just as she goes to speak, the door opens. There’s a blonde man standing in the doorway, and he looks pale and out of breath. The man sags against the frame, and he looks at him like he’s waited all his life for just this moment. He looks back at the man, and he thinks that the man’s face isn’t as bruised as the last time he saw it. It looks clean and fresh, and unmarred by anything except bone weary exhaustion. 

 

“Bucky?” the man asks, and he thinks that he was supposed to kill this person. He doesn’t want to do that. He’s not allowed to want. But he fears that disobeying this order will hurt less then if he followed through. He’s never had that happen. Or maybe he has. Maybe years ago it was the reason he disobeyed time and again. He just hadn’t been introduced to the creativity of Hydra and their decades worth of patience. 

 

He knew everything Hydra had to offer, and he knew he was terrified to be subjected to that same pain over and over. He knew which battles he was willing to fight, and he surprised himself with the realization that he’d still fight them all so long as it meant that this man survived. 

 

The fat woman left, muttering something under her breath as she flounced from the room. The man stepped in and shut the door behind him.

 

“Buck-Bucky, do you-do you know who I am?” the man asks, and he considers for a moment what he knew. 

 

The man is someone named Captain America. No, that’s not right. The man is someone named Steven Grant Rogers -  _“Call me Steve, everyone does. Well, no one calls me much of anything, but I prefer Steve to what they do call me in any case!”_ \- and he is not a child any longer, though he was one at some point. He is tall and blonde, and he likes to sketch. This man is someone he knew, and he thinks that this man is the adult version of the boy at the window. He’d like it if he were. He misses that boy, and maybe that boy knows how to bring him home. 

 

“Steve?” he asks, and his voice hurts in his throat as he speaks. It has been far too long since he opened his mouth to speak, and he flinches as he feels his throat quake from the effort. He swallows convulsively, and the boy who is now a man (or the man who was once a boy) steps forward to take his hand. 

 

“Yeah,” he says wetly, “yeah Buck, it’s me. It’s me, do you remember anything else?” 

 

He thinks for a moment about the woman with the cloth in her hand, and the man who played the piano and didn’t tolerate any disrespect. He thinks about the men in the trenches and the soldier who died pushing him out of the way from a bullet that surely would have killed him dead. He thinks about the three little girls in their pretty white dresses. He thinks about all of this, but doesn’t know if that’s what he wants to hear. He doesn’t want to lose these things, and he doesn’t want Captain Ameri-Rogers to know that he  _wants_ anything so desperately. 

 

He doesn’t say anything, and he stares up at Steve. Steve doesn’t say anything else either. He just reaches around and holds him close, and for a moment he thinks about pulling back from the embrace. He thinks about pulling away and putting distance between them. He doesn’t want to feel the hold. He doesn’t want to feel anything. But he hasn’t been held in so very long and he’s so tired now. He’s so tired. He remembers the woman with the cloth used to hold him sometimes, and he remembers being sick and coughing against her shoulder when he was very very small. He thinks he likes to be held, even though he knows he’s not meant to have an opinion one way or another. 

 

“I’m breaking down,” he murmured. Steve hasn’t let go, and he doesn’t think Steve ever will. Instead, Steve shifts his embrace and holds him even closer. 

 

“I’m right here. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He’s heard this promise before. He’s heard it so often that he doesn’t believe it anymore. It’s not possible to keep the world from him. He’s either too good at finding trouble, or the world will always be there no matter what he says or does. “What do you want? What can I do for you? Please, tell me anything.” 

 

 _“Is this a test?”_ Steve had asked in a back alley in Brooklyn, in a school room in front of his (their?) peers, in front of a woman with a cloth and a man with a belt buckle, and he thinks that those people might be his momma and pop. 

 

“Is this a test?” He asks Steve now. Steve shakes his head against Bucky’s crown. Strong arms hold him even closer, and it feels nice to be held. It feels nice to just sit there. It reminds him of days kneeling at his commander’s feet, completely silent and floating from the sensation of a hand through his hair. It reminds him of the warmth of a sable blanket wrapped around his shoulders and the crackle of a fire. Those had been good days, and he had been so willing to do anything for that man. He’d been willing to do anything at all, so long as he could make that man happy. 

 

He hadn’t, in the end. In the end he had been so fixated on another man - on a man on a bridge - on Steve, that he hadn’t done his job appropriately. He thinks that he was hurt worse that night then any other night previously. He thinks that that chair had dug into his skull and sent electricity through his mind, and it had been vengeance on his commander’s part. He hadn’t meant to disobey. He hadn’t meant to not listen. But he’d been distracted, confused, uncertain - he just wanted to know what was happening. 

 

He just wanted to have an answer.  

 

“No, no, anything you want. Anything.” Steve promises him the world, and he thinks it might be worth the pain of recalibration to find the answer he’s been looking for. He thinks he’ll find peace in the chair, or peace at Steve’s feet, and he just wants an answer to come down to him. He closes his eyes and whispers his prayer.

 

“I want to go home,” he says. Steve goes rigid around him, and he thinks he must have made a mistake. 

 

“Bucky, what’s home to you?” Steve asks softly, and he answers. 

 

“There’s a dark wood floor and a table with four uneven legs. There’s a chipped pot on the stove, and there are girls in dresses. There’s a knit blanket, and it smells like stew. There’s a man who plays piano and a woman who dabs tears with a cloth, and there’s a boy in the window that draws on yellow paper.” He thinks there’s more, and he’d go on if he could, but there are tears in his eyes and his throat feels tight. Steve’s shaking against him, and he can feel tears on his hair too. He realizes they’re both crying, and that doesn’t quite seem to make much sense to him. Then, he realizes it does. “Steve? I’m never going home, am I?” he asks.

 

Steve shakes his head wordlessly, and the pain that sears through him is worse than anything else he’d felt before. He was wrong. There is always something worse. Hydra is nothing if not imaginative. He feels as though his insides have been carved out of his body and set on display. He shuts his eyes and goes boneless in Steve’s embrace. 

 

 _"Compliance will be rewarded,_ " he’d been told time and again. 

 

There’d only ever been one thing he’d wanted as a reward. 

 

Disobedience never led him home. 

 

Now he knew that it never would. 

 

He should have stayed still.  Someone would have come for him eventually. He presses his fingers to his mouth, desperate for a guard to bite onto. Steve cries brokenly around him. It doesn’t matter. 

 

He’ll stay still. Someone will find him. Compliance will be rewarded. He is ready to comply. 

**Author's Note:**

> Got a prompt? Want to say hi? Find me on tumblr: falcon-fox-and-coyote.tumblr.com


End file.
